University of Alabama School of Law adds class in electronic evidence

The University of Alabama School of Law has begun offering a class in electronic evidence, just ahead of the introduction of new state rules governing the courts' handling of everything from old e-mails to caches of data.

Allison O. Skinner, the instructor of the class and a lawyer with the Birmingham firm of Sirote & Permutt, said the proliferation of e-mail, text messages and other electronically stored data has outpaced the law, causing confusion and fights over evidence.

Estimates from the Radicati Group, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based market research firm, indicate that more than 210 million e-mails are sent worldwide daily, and more than 1 trillion text messages were sent worldwide in 2008. Some of them, inevitably, end up in court.

"We're seeing this explosion of information, and there have been lots of discovery battles," Skinner said.

Federal courts established electronic discovery rules in 2006, and the Alabama Supreme Court in November ordered Alabama courts to adopt the same rules beginning next week.

Among the rules:

- Parties responding to a discovery request must search all sources that are reasonably accessible, and identify sources not searched.

- The party making the request can ask for the information in a particular form, such as a PDF, or in its original form. The party supplying the information can object to the request.

- Courts are not to impose sanctions when information was deleted as part of routine, good-faith operations. But information should be preserved when there's reason to believe a legal claim is pending.

Electronic evidence and how it is handled will increasingly have implications in all sorts of areas of the law, including probate, domestic relations and personal injury, Skinner said.

The class -- Law 653, advanced civil procedure -- is one of fewer than 20 e-evidence courses being taught at law schools nationwide. A similar class has been taught at the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University.

The explosion of electronic communications, and the new body of law related to it, is changing the look of some law firms, which are adding information-technology specialists and teams dedicated to electronic evidence. And there also are implications outside the courtroom, Skinner said.

"For companies, it's a big deal because a lot of businesses aren't prepared to get these kinds of requests," she said.